2025 Guide to Career Pathing: 8 Steps, Importance & Examples

A well-structured career development framework is essential for developing a skilled workforce, increasing employee engagement, and driving business success. This guide to career pathing outlines eight key steps to creating an effective framework, highlights its importance, and provides real-world examples to help organizations support career growth and internal mobility. A Pew Research survey found that 63% of individuals who left their jobs in 2022 cited a lack of advancement opportunities as a reason for their departure.  These statistics underscore the importance of providing clear career development paths to retain top talent.

Career Progression: What is a Career Development Framework?

A career progression framework is a structured approach to defining and guiding an employee’s professional growth. It provides a clear pathway for employees to develop their skills, take on new responsibilities, and advance within the organization. Companies that use career development frameworks do a better job of engaging and motivating their workforce.

Career Progression Examples

1. Entry-Level to Managerial Role – A marketing associate progresses to a manager by achieving specific milestones. Each person’s milestones will be unique based on their skills and experience.
2. Technical Career Path—A software engineer moves from junior to senior-level roles by gaining expertise in new technologies or contributing to critical projects.
3. Lateral Career Growth – An employee transitions from a marketing role to product management by acquiring various experiences and knowledge.

Why Should We Implement a Career Pathing Framework?

Finding, hiring, and keeping good talent is challenging for companies today. Some roles are in high demand, and companies risk losing their best employees to competitors. To mitigate this, organizations must ask themselves, “How can we ensure that our talent not only wants to stay but envisions long-term growth within our company?”

A career framework is essential for professional growth because it helps organizations:

• Provide transparency in job progression.
• Align individual goals with business objectives.
• Encourage continuous learning and upskilling.
• Enhance employee satisfaction and reduce turnover.
• Facilitate succession planning and leadership development.

Employees may struggle to understand the opportunities for large organizations with multiple job families and roles. If an employee aspires to a higher-level position, a lateral move, or even an entirely new role, they need clarity on where to focus their development. Without a career development framework, employees may feel lost and consider leaving for an organization with a more straightforward job path.

Here’s what employees might be thinking:
“I have no idea where my career is going. Since there’s no clear path, I may go somewhere that offers better growth opportunities.

A career development framework provides employees with clear steps to advance. It eliminates surprises during performance reviews and outlines precisely what they need to do to earn a promotion or transition into a new role.

“I know I need to improve in some areas to get promoted, but I’m not sure where or what my company expects.”

A well-designed framework highlights skill gaps and facilitates productive discussions between employees and managers about development opportunities. This helps employees gain the necessary skills to advance.

“So many training resources are available, but I don’t know which ones are relevant to me.”

While offering a broad range of learning options is valuable, it can also be overwhelming. No employee wants to search a learning catalog for a market research course only to find 2,765 different options. Which course is the right one to close the gap? A career development framework makes it easier to address skill gaps and achieve career goals.

Employee engagement is a hot topic and crucial to retaining your best talent. One effective strategy to improve employee engagement is to implement a career development framework. A framework helps organizations empower employees with clear career paths and reinforce their commitment to professional growth.

When to Update Your Framework for Career Progression

A career progression framework should be revisited regularly to ensure it remains relevant. Consider updating your framework when:

• Your company undergoes a major corporate restructuring.
• New technologies or industry standards emerge.
• Employees express concerns about unclear job paths.
• Internal promotions are inconsistent or lack clear criteria.

When to Use This Framework

A career development framework is helpful in multiple scenarios:
• Hiring and onboarding new employees.
• Conducting performance reviews.
• Planning succession strategies.
• Designing learning and development programs.

8 Steps to Create or Update Your Framework

1. Evaluate Your Current Career Progression Framework

Review your job catalog or architecture to ensure job titles are clear, roles are not duplicated, and each job accurately reflects the skills employees need to develop to achieve proficiency.

2. Determine the drivers for creating a Career Progression Framework

Identify the key challenges driving the need for a new or updated framework. Are you addressing high employee turnover, difficulty filling critical roles due to specialized industry requirements, or employee concerns about limited growth opportunities? Are skill gaps preventing your organization from staying competitive? Understanding your objectives will help guide the framework’s design and ensure it effectively supports business needs and employee development.

3. Identify Where to Start for Maximum Impact

Use the insights from your defined goals to determine which job functions or roles would benefit most from a structured career progression framework. Engage with department heads and leaders to understand their challenges, identify critical skill gaps, and gather feedback on future skill needs as their teams grow. Review key roles within each department to ensure they follow a logical progression, supporting employee development and business objectives.

4. Define the Criteria for Career Growth: Skills vs. Behavioral Indicators

Organizations must determine whether employees advance based on skills or behavioral indicators when designing a career progression framework. This choice affects how development is structured, assessed, and communicated across the organization.
Skills-Based Progression: This approach broadly describes the key skills required for a role, offering a high-level way to assess employee growth. It is useful when organizations need a simple framework for career development but do not require detailed definitions of proficiency levels. For example, a skill like “communication” may be listed as a requirement for a role but without specifying what proficiency looks like at different stages. Managers and employees rely on general understanding and subjective judgment to determine whether someone possesses the skill.

Behavioral Indicator-Based Progression: This method provides a structured, objective way to evaluate employee capabilities by defining observable behaviors at varying proficiency levels. Instead of stating that an employee must have “communication” skills, behavioral indicators outline what basic, intermediate, advanced, and expert communication looks like in practice. This removes subjectivity and bias, ensuring career progression is based on clear, measurable criteria. For example, a basic-level communicator may deliver explicit, structured emails, while an expert-level communicator may influence stakeholders and navigate complex negotiations.

Organizations must decide whether to use skills-based or behavioral indicator-based progression to guide career growth. This is not an easy choice and HR teams are often challenged by the decision. The choice should align with the level of data and objectivity needed to assess employee capabilities and support career mobility.

5. Structure and Standardize Your Job Levels for Career Progression

Define job levels to support career advancement, such as junior, mid-level, senior, and executive roles. Organizations typically categorize job levels using numbers, letters, or a combination of both to establish a structured hierarchy.
Some companies use a numbered grading system, such as Level 1 for entry-level roles and Level 13 for executive leadership (e.g., CEO).

Others adopt a letter-based framework, such as A to E, where each letter represents increasing responsibility and expertise.
The number of levels varies depending on the size and complexity of the organization.  The key is to keep it simple, logical, and transparent for employees.

Once job levels are established, standardize job titles to maintain consistency. Avoid multiple variations of the same title (e.g., using “Developer II” for some roles and “Senior Developer” for others). Instead, adopt a straightforward, uniform naming convention to minimize confusion.

6. Define the Skills and Competencies Required for Advancement

Clearly outline the skills, experience, and qualifications employees need to progress to the next level. This ensures transparency in career growth and helps managers provide structured guidance.
Specify the key competencies required for each role, such as:

• Technical skills – Role-specific expertise needed to perform effectively.
• Leadership abilities – Skills like decision-making, team management, and strategic thinking.
• Soft skills – Communication, adaptability, and problem-solving.

Defining skills expectations across the job levels helps employees understand what they need to develop. It makes career progression structured and objective.

7. Establish Compensation Bands for Each Role

Define salary ranges for each job level to ensure fairness and transparency in compensation. Employees will be curious about how their compensation changes as they progress laterally or up the ladder.

8. Implement and Communicate Your Career Pathing Framework

Rolling out a career progression framework is more than just introducing a new structure—it requires careful communication, training, and integration into existing HR processes to ensure adoption and long-term success.

• Communicate Clearly and Transparently
• Employees and managers need to understand why the new framework is being implemented, how it benefits them, and how it will be used to support career growth. A well-structured communication plan should include:
• Company-Wide Announcements: Use emails, town halls, or leadership meetings to introduce the framework and its purpose.
• Manager Training: Equip managers with the knowledge to guide employees through the new career pathways and answer questions.
• Employee FAQs and Guides: Provide easy-to-understand resources that outline how the framework works and what employees need to do to advance.

Provide Training and Support

To ensure employees and managers can effectively use the framework, offer:

• Workshops and Training Sessions: Cover how job levels, skills, and competencies are defined and assessed.
• 1:1 Career Development Meetings: Encourage managers to discuss career growth opportunities with employees using the framework as a guide.
• Online Resources: Create a knowledge base with career progression roadmaps, skill expectations, and FAQs.

Integrate Career Progression Into HR Processes

For the framework to be practical, it must be embedded into key HR and talent management processes, including:
Performance Reviews: Link employee assessments to the skills and competencies outlined in the framework.

• Career Planning Discussions: Encourage employees to map their career paths based on required skills and competencies.
• Learning and Development Programs: Align training resources with skill gaps and progression requirements.
• Compensation and Promotion Decisions: Ensure promotions and salary adjustments are aligned with clearly defined job levels and competencies.

Gather Feedback and Continuously Improve

After launching the framework, actively gather feedback from employees, managers, and HR teams to identify areas for improvement. Schedule periodic reviews to ensure they remain relevant as job roles and skills evolve.

Organizations can create a structured, transparent system that supports employee growth and business success by communicating effectively, training employees, and embedding career progression into HR processes.

Follow-Up Best Practices for Career Frameworks

Use Your Framework for Career Progression to Streamline Your Hiring Process.

A career progression framework helps recruiters match candidates with the right roles by defining clear expectations for each position.

Make the Career Progression Framework Part of Your Culture

Encourage managers and employees to actively engage with the career development framework as a tool for mentorship, performance discussions, and professional growth. By implementing a career pathing framework, companies can provide employees with the structure they need to grow while fostering a culture of continuous development and success.

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FAQs on Career Pathing and Development Frameworks

What is a career framework?

A career path framework is a structured system that outlines how employees can grow within an organization. It defines job levels, required skills, and competencies, providing employees with clear career progression opportunities. This framework helps organizations align workforce development with business needs while giving employees a roadmap for advancement.

What are the 4 pillars of the career development framework?

The four key pillars of a career development framework typically include:

• Job Roles and Levels – A structured hierarchy that defines different job roles and levels within the organization.
• Skills and Competencies – The specific skills, knowledge, and behaviors required to progress to the next level.
• Learning and Development – Training programs, mentorship, and other learning opportunities to help employees acquire necessary skills.
• Career Planning and Mobility – Tools and processes that support career progression, including performance reviews, promotions, and lateral moves.

What is the career pathing process?

The career pathing process is the strategic approach to helping employees advance in their careers. It typically involves:

• Assessing Current Skills and Interests – Employees evaluate their skills and career aspirations.
• Defining Career Goals – Setting short-term and long-term career objectives.
• Identifying Required Skills and Competencies – Understanding what is needed to reach the next level.
• Developing a Learning and Growth Plan – Engaging in training, mentorship, and skill-building activities.
• Tracking Progress and Making Adjustments – Regularly reviewing progress with managers and adjusting the plan as needed.

What are the 4 types of career paths?

Career paths can vary based on individual and organizational needs. The four common types include:

• Vertical Career Path – Traditional upward progression through job levels (e.g., moving from Analyst to Manager to Director).
• Lateral Career Path – Moving across different roles at the same level to gain broader experience (e.g., transitioning from
• Marketing to Product Management).
• Dual Career Path – Providing options for employees to grow in technical or leadership tracks (e.g., an engineer choosing between becoming a Senior Engineer or moving into Engineering Management).
• Portfolio Career Path – Building a career across multiple roles, industries, or gig work rather than following a linear trajectory.

How do I create a career path plan?

To create a career path plan, follow these steps:

• Self-Assessment – Identify strengths, interests, and career goals.
• Explore Career Options – Research potential career paths within the organization or industry.
• Set Career Goals – Define clear short-term and long-term career objectives.
• Identify Required Skills – Determine the skills and experiences needed for advancement.
• Develop a Learning and Development Plan – Seek training, certifications, mentorship, and on-the-job experiences.
• Track Progress and Adjust – Regularly evaluate growth, seek feedback, and refine the plan as needed.

What is the career ladder model?

The career ladder model is a structured system that outlines the progression from entry-level roles to higher-level positions within an organization. It provides a clear, step-by-step path for advancement, defining job levels, required skills, and promotion criteria. Some organizations use a traditional hierarchical model, while others may offer dual career paths, allowing employees to choose between technical expertise and leadership roles. The goal is to provide employees with a roadmap for professional growth and upward mobility.

Let us be your guide to career pathing. Request a demo today.